Scouts
To be perfectly honest, I had never thought much on love. I had never experienced it, not in a romantic sense, so it was an abstract concept to me. The Nords treated me with distrust, if not open disgust, and of the few female Argonians in the Assemblage, I considered them only as friends, or sisters. My own sex held no pleasure for me.
Then one day...she had shown up, dragging herself, freezing and soaking up the dock steps. She had curled up and shivered a while before someone approached her.
"Are you alright?" Shavee asked the Imperial, who looked up with bleary eyes.
" 'M fine. Fell off the bridge." The human grinned, unabashedly. "Guess I'm still not used to the cold."
I didn't see much of her after that, until she tapped me on the shoulder and started asking questions. I was a little shocked at first, used to humans treating me as a slave, but answered her questions happily. Her curiosity seemed disproportionate to her experienced eyes, but when she heard of the inequality we suffered at the hands of Shatter-Shield, her face lost its enthusiasm, her lips pursed, and she grew contemplatively silent. She bid me farewell before purposefully walking off into the city, an angry briskness in her stride.
Less than an hour later she crawled up the docks again, gasping and spluttering. I was close by, and this time I rushed to her side, helping her onto dry land.
"Couldn't find my way here through the city. Got lost. Figured swimming was easier." She explained between gasps. The bedraggled Imperial shook the frigid water out of her hair and looked up at him, smiling. "Torbjorn will pay you fairly now. He has sworn it." She rested a pale, calloused hand on my chest. "If he does not, let me know. I will ensure he fulfills his oath."
The sight of her, looking up at me, smiling, an unreadable expression in those eyes, have stayed with me to this day. And to this day, it awakens a strange longing in me. Like I would move mountains if it would make her smile like that again.
When I lie in my bed at night, sadly devoid of her presence, I begin to wonder if that strange longing is love.
After all, what else could it be?